Blame it on the recession or blame it on the numbing dominance of the European Union's ruling class, Brussels' Nnevteiga excels at droning, hypnotic noise that digs into your psyche like toothpicks to yr fingernails. Their second cassette-LP finds these Belgians digging deeper into the carrion pit of misery they began excavating on last year's self-titled debut. There's the same mix of grinding monotony, sheer brattiness, and a knack for hummable beats buried beneath sludge.
"Cold You and I" epitomises the band's sound: squalling feedback yields to a moronic metronome and the singer gulping, gurgling, and intoning beneath the grey film of choleric bathwater (that would be the synthesizers, I suppose). There's a delightfully numb-yet-tuneful bassline, added layers of vituperative noise gunk, and still that fucking gurgling bloody mess called singing.
I could continue this review, but that would be like describing my mental state: you can guess what the rest of the record is like without me spelling it out for you, right kids?
Sure you can. So hurry yr asses over to Nnevteiga's bandcamp page. There you can blow out your eardrums in style, before BUYING THE FUCKING THING. Which you should do; the artwork is gorgeous and the good folks at Tendresse Records send you weird 3D cards when you order copies of the tape. Said cards are really fun to waste hours staring at when you're cracked out of your mind on cheap beer, Varnelli, and whatever drugs you managed to scrounge from your longsuffering housemates.
Hey, it's John, the guy you talk about at the start of this post. Seems weird to be called a "jerk" who's "giving a hard time" to the Wizard, when my comments on Terminal Escape were polite and far from agressive (Go back and read them... I even mentioned enjoying/ following his blog, what kind of dumbass would mention this when trying to "give a hard time" to someone?) Obviously the point wasn't that someone can't enjoy "miserable" or "abrasive" music (duh, otherwise why would I waste my time following these blogs and listening to all these bands?), but that when one does a lot of music reviews without ever saying something negative, it becomes harder for the reader to trust that person's reviews. I'm not talking about sharing a record and saying "this band is just crap" obviously (if it's crap, why share it? I get this as, believe it or not, I'm not completely stupid) but SOME comments that don't sound like the writer is in love with everything and high on coffee all the time wouldn't hurt either, like, I don't know... "Great tape even if the drums sound way too clean", "love all songs except the third one which is terrible", "killer songs but the production should be more dirty", "great band/ terrible artwork", etc. Anyway, I thought his was common sense, that if there's never "negative" comments then the "postive" ones tend to become irrelevant, but maybe it isn't after all. With that said, thanks for doing Drug Punk, which I follow and enjoy as well... Just a bit disappointed to see that, apart from The Wizard himself, people respond to someone trying to TALK about the "art of music reviews" by being agressive straight away. Cheers, John.
ReplyDeleteHey John-
ReplyDeleteYour comments are duly noted, and I agree with the points you made in your original comment. Pretty much everything I say on DrugPunk is intended for hyperbolic and/or rhetorical purposes, and shouldn't be taken too seriously. I don't revise posts after publishing them unless there's factual errors, but I didn't mean it as a personal snipe at you. Thanks for the comment, which is actually more intelligent than most of the stuff I write for the blog!